FAQs
Q: What does TGaS® Advisors do?
A: TGaS Advisors is a management advisory firm that provides unique benchmarking services to pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies. The TGaS Advisors roster includes the majority of the top 50 pharmaceutical companies with operations in the U.S. market. The firm’s benchmarking solutions (PHARMASTANCE®) provide clients a way to measure where they stand with respect to their operations and answers the question, “How do other pharmaceutical companies do ‘it’?®”
Q: What is benchmarking?
A: In the business world, benchmarking is a powerful management tool that allows companies to evaluate various aspects of their businesses to see how they compare to other companies in the industry. Benchmarking at TGaS Advisors is a continuous improvement process which provides for a fact-based method of evaluating strategic and tactical alternatives through ongoing gap analysis.
Q: How does benchmarking help business performance?
A: Benchmarking has several advantages. First, it exposes companies to new methods, ideas and tools that they might not otherwise have encountered. It helps business managers overcome doubts about adopting new practices. By demonstrating the effectiveness of approaches used by others, it helps reduce the resistance to change. Finally, benchmarking counteracts entrenched corporate cultures that rely too heavily on tried — but possibly not so true — methods. The benefits of benchmarking with TGaS Advisors includes, but is not limited to:
- Strategic perspective
- Consistent source of Gap analysis
- Economic rationale
- Shortened experience curve
- Organization design and operations
- Outside — in perspective on market capabilities
- Ongoing operational indices
- Sourcing perspective
- Staff / Career management
Q: How does TGaS Advisors develop benchmarks?
A: TGaS Advisors develops PHARMASTANCE benchmarks by gathering extensive information from its diverse set of pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical clients. The information used to establish benchmarks typically consists of hundreds of data elements and reflects a deep understanding of functional areas and roles. The process is comprehensive and thorough. TGaS Advisors conducts in depth data discovery with experienced (20+ years) professionals via 1-1 interviews to obtain answers to questions about clients’ operations. TGaS Advisors also takes an ecosystem approach to each benchmark by focusing on multiple departments and areas, versus focusing on one single issue. As the client list changes and grows, a fresh PHARMASTANCE database is continuously created which guarantees clients access to the latest ‘thinking’ in the Industry.
Q: What is an “ecosystem” in this context?
A: Unlike traditional consulting and benchmarking services, TGaS Advisors provides fact-based, holistic information about operational “ecosystems,” i.e., all areas impacted by a change in one sector. This enables companies to understand linkages across interdependent systems and foster internal change accordingly. To take this approach, TGaS Advisors typically hires professionals with 20+ years of direct pharmaceutical experience.
Q: How long does a typical PHARMASTANCE benchmarking take?
A: It can take anywhere from two to four months, depending on the needs of the clients and the number of participants. The professionals at TGaS Advisors all have first-hand and wide-ranging knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry. Their backgrounds include senior positions within major pharmaceutical companies and industry-related services. For that reason, TGaS Advisors knows the right questions to ask, getting at the heart of the issue efficiently.
Q: What does TGaS Advisors do with the information it obtains?
A: Using the collected information, TGaS Advisors aggregates the results to draw insights about various aspects of clients’ operations. PHARMASTANCE findings are shared exclusively with the clients who contributed to the database. TGaS Advisors understands and ensures the strictest confidentiality policies and practices are in place. Specific clients are never identified by name in the shared benchmarks. Similarly, nomenclature unique to specific clients is omitted to preserve anonymity.
Q: How does TGaS Advisors report to its clients? What’s the format and content?
A: TGaS Advisors reports results of its benchmark to clients through a confidential process designed to insure that companies cannot determine which information belongs to which other companies included in the benchmark. Besides providing a report, TGaS Advisors Partners are always available to their clients to discuss / present the findings.
Q: Does TGaS Advisors guide clients in how to alter operations to improve performance?
A: TGaS Advisors considers itself “implementation agnostic.” The company believes its role is to provide objective, fact-based insights which help clients make the most informed and best decisions possible. Unlike traditional consulting companies, TGaS Advisors doesn’t sell ancillary follow-on services or syndicate its data, but it does provide implementation recommendations based on the unbiased information in the dataset. TGaS Advisors will also help clients develop an action plan to help ensure that the benchmark insights are put into action.
Q: In what areas does TGaS Advisors offer PHARMASTANCE benchmarks?
A: TGaS Advisors currently provides PHARMASTANCE operational benchmarking in sales and specialty sales operations, compliance operations, marketing sciences and marketing operations, Internet and relationship marketing, sales management effectiveness and managed markets operations. TGaS Advisors is constantly exploring new areas that respond to client needs.
Q: How often are PHARMASTANCE benchmarks updated?
A: It depends. TGaS Advisors views its benchmarks as part of an ongoing continuous improvement process. The process is dynamic and meant to capture the changes that occur as companies evolve. A typical benchmark is updated every year, with the exception of the Internet marketing benchmark, which is updated quarterly. TGaS Advisors clients are typically multi-year clients which benefit from the ‘deeper’ knowledge and relationship TGaS Advisors gains with them over time.
Q: Besides benchmarking, does TGaS Advisors offer other services to clients?
A: TGaS Advisors regularly hosts forums at which clients can learn about developments and trends that will impact the pharmaceutical industry, the healthcare sector and consumers. Forums may take the form of presentations by experts on topics of interest to our clients or they might be intimate gatherings at which clients can share insights and ideas among themselves.
TGaS Advisors also conduct virtual “How do other Pharmaceutical Companies do ‘it’?®” benchmarks on a topic of broad interest, sharing the results with clients. For example, clients were polled on how they handled compensation for sales reps affected by ongoing issues surrounding prescription data, as well as issues like Offshoring.